Archived News:

Sunday, Nov 11, 2012 Armistice/Veterans/Remembrance Day

Randy Pitchford tweets a response to a question about whether players can expect more classes for Borderlands 2, considering the success of the mechromancer DLC for the role-playing shooter sequel (thanks nin). For those unwilling to read through his entire answer, the indication is that there is indeed reason to be optimistic that they still plan on adding additional characters to the game. For those interested in the nuance, here's an exact quote of his reply: "yes."

An interview on the Red Bull Website about the imminent release of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition. Their caffeinated questioning leads to the revelation that we should expect a similarly enhanced remake of Baldur's Gate II next year (thanks VG247). Here's word:

With release just weeks away, it’s nearly at it’s end, but Oster plans to get stuck straight into revamping the sequel, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows Of Amn, which came out in 2000.

“We are committed to doing Baldur’s Gate 2: Enhanced Edition,” he says. “The instant Baldur’s Gate is completed most of our team is ready to start work on [it], with a couple holding back to continue to add features and support the fans...We're planning on shipping [it] in 2013, hopefully before the end of summer. I want to enjoy some sun this year - 2012 was a write off.”

A THQ SEC Filing (Adobe Acrobat format) reveals more fiscal bad news for the publisher, following a a recent collapse of its stock. The filing reveals THQ is in default on a line of credit from Wells Fargo, leading to a delayed 10-Q filing, and a situation that sounds tenuous at best: "The Company is currently in discussions with Wells Fargo regarding the asserted defaults and believes that it will reach an agreement with Wells Fargo with respect to such defaults. Wells Fargo has continued to fund requests from the Company after September 30, 2012 while Wells Fargo and the Company attempt to reach an agreement. There can be no assurance, however, that the Company will achieve an agreement with Wells Fargo." Thanks nin via Kotaku/Polygon.

A lengthy post on the Roberts Space Industries Website offers new information on Star Citizen, the upcoming crowd-sourced space simulator from Wing Commander architect Chris Roberts (thanks Bruno and Matt). Chris describes his unrealized ambitions for an MMO version of Freelancer, and how: "With Star Citizen I was determined to combine what I wanted to achieve with Freelancer, with the personal experience that I think both Wing Commander and Privateer were so strong with." He goes into great detail on multiplayer gameplay and balance after outlining how multiplayer will dispense with the kind of shards of which he is not a fan:

In Star Citizen there is going to be one persistent universe server that everyone exists on. So you will never be separated from your friends, and if you want you’ll be able to join up and adventure together, you can. Due to the fidelity of the dogfighting and physics simulation we can’t however handle thousands of players in the same area of space. Even if you had enough internet bandwidth to handle the data going back and forth and a super computer for the server there’s no PC, even with quad SLI that could render that many spaceships with Star Citizen’s fidelity.

So the “magic” of Star Citizen’s multiplayer design is how we combine a persistent universe with a more traditional (and easier to implement) temporary multiplayer “battle” instance.

The way it works is that the persistent universe server, which we’re calling the Galaxy Server, keeps track of all players’ assets, group relationships and locations inside the Star Citizen universe. As the Galaxy server isn’t handling any realtime action it can handle our complete player base, which right now would be about 45,000 players, but is designed to be able to scale to millions if need be. The other key thing the Galaxy Server does is dynamically place players based on their location, skill level, alignment and player versus player (PvP) preference into battle instances. Think of a “battle” instance like a Battlefield 3 multiplayer session or a World of Tanks Battle with the key difference that the selection of players is done transparently and is “in fiction”.

The Descent to UDK Website reveals plans for a fan-developed remake of Descent, the six-degrees-of-freedom tunnel shooter from days gone by (thanks LittleMe). The UDK project is expected to be made available early next year, and this experimental gameplay trailer shows early progress towards that goal. Here is the project leader's outline of their first release:

a retelling of Descent's story

the original levels remade, with an emphasis on a thriller/horror atmosphere

remodeled and animated original robots with advanced AI

all the weapons from Descent with potential new ones mixed in

a high-detail Pyro-GX ship model with a 3D cockpit view

more diverse gameplay with a strong focus on the basics that made Descent great

NVIDIA's quarterly financials show a profit for the period. Word is: "Nvidia's Kepler architecture has trickled down to the majority of the firm's products including the high volume mainstream market in the past quarter. Now the company is reaping the rewards with third quarter revenue increasing by 12.9 percent to $1.2bn while profits increased by 17.3 percent to $209.1m." Thanks HARDOCP.

Happy first birthday to Skyrim! More significantly, today is Veteran's Day here in the U.S., though it falling on Sunday means the Federal holiday for this will be observed tomorrow. Here's a salute to the vets for their bravery and sacrifice, and an expression of hope that we can improve the way we support our returning soldiers, as well as an expression of hope that we can improve our diplomacy so there are fewer soldiers sent out there in the first place.

Saturday, Nov 10, 2012

The Bethesda Blog announces the removal of the original DOOM 3 from Steam is now remedied, and the standalone versions of DOOM 3 and the Resurrection of Evil expansion are now available at a lowered price for those not interested in the DOOM 3 BFG Edition’s release. This will allow players to play online with other owners of the standalone edition, as well as the ability to install the user-created modifications for id Software's shooter sequel. They also reveal that there may be more user content coming to the new edition, as word is: "For players with the BFG Edition of the game, you’ll be happy to know that we’ll be releasing the GPL source code in the near future. Stay tuned for updates."

"I’m only going to make one more game, I think," famed game designer Peter Molyneux tells BeefJack. "And that thought – the thought of every ounce of my energy, every ounce of my experience, every mistake that I’ve made in every single game – if I can learn from that, and use that energy to make one game… that’s what I’m trying to do." This comes on the heels of the release of Curiosity and word that this first of his company's experiments to lead up to this one more world changing game is not likely to be released for PCs as originally planned. They also have word on the next experiment in this series, Co-Operation, which Molyneux has described as being "like a tug of war," saying this may launch within 48 hours, which, going by the date of the of the interview, means it's already overdue. As for this upcoming full game that will cap his career, at this point it seems ambition is the only part that's fully planned: "Could I sit down and describe it to you in full at the moment? No, I can’t," he said. "But that is my thought. We’re going to make a game, we’re going to learn what it is to make a game in today’s world, and it’s going to be the defining game of my career." Thanks Develop.

Happy 10/11/12 to those who write dates in dd/mm/yy notation. I know it's been a long wait since the rest of us experienced what I called at the time the "sheer, unadulterated awesomeness of this date," so your time is now upon us. Enjoy!